bar none group

Sunday, May 31, 2015

A Connecticut teacher was forced to resign for reciting the Allen Ginsberg poem Please Master to his class of high school seniors.

One of his students asked to share the poem with the class and after some trepidation, David Olio — a former teacher of the year — recited the poem. Some students were left feeling uncomfortable which in turn lead to parents becoming infuriated that their children were subjected to the poem.

We present Please Master in it's unadulterated entirety for you for the sake of discussion. If you are offended by poetry, art, rights and freedoms then stop reading now because you will no doubt be offended.

Monday, May 4, 2015

First Lines Second Thoughts is an occcasional look at the first lines of well known literary works. On second thought, do these opening words stand alone as poetry? Today, we look at the opening lines of James Joyce's classic Finnegan's Wake. Published this day in 1939 after 17 years of writing and rewriting.

The first words are a sentence fragment which continues from the book's unfinished last line. This has the effect of making Finnegan's Wake a never-ending cycle.

Friday, May 1, 2015

To call Joe Hill a rabble-rouser would be an understatement. To say that he was a hero of the working man would also be an understatement. An immigrant from Sweden, Joe Hill came to America during difficult times, when companies were known to use violence to keep their overworked and underprivileged employees under thumb.

Joe Hill would take popular songs, change the lyrics and come up with working man, pro-union tunes. One of his most famous reinterpretations, The Preacher and the Slave is remembered today for giving us the phrase, "pie in the sky."